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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Review: Black Butler

I'm a little late in the game to be getting into this anime, Black Butler (or Kuroshitsuji) is one of the more popular titles to have come out in recent years. It's got a lot going for it, beautiful art, fantastic and well developed characters, plus it's really well written so kudos to the talented writer illustrator Yana Toboso. It's also helped along by catering fervently to the plethora of yaoi fangirls out there, and they'll pretty much buy anything with a hint of boy on boy action so I'm guessing that Black Butler, for a lot of them is too much of a good thing. Like going to Disneyland, and then getting to cut in front of everyone in line.

I recently watched season 1 of the anime and read up to the circus arc of the manga. Season 1 follows the manga up until the last 6 or 7 episodes, but even though the stories veer off from one another the anime still keeps the characters thankfully true to form. My favorite character being Ciel Phantomhive himself, though I'm sure few people would agree with me, I've come to think of him as a bit of a role model. I believe anger can be a source of great strength in people, some people, are frankly stupid and don't know how to use it, but Ciel is smart, manipulative, and passionate. Where another child might have lashed out after receiving the treatment he did, Ciel quietly positions his game pieces. Anger can be a good motivator, and even though so many people caution him about his path the kid sticks to it defiantly. He's maybe not what you think of as a traditional role model, but who gives a shit about traditional anyway.

I've really liked what I've seen of the anime so far, there are a few issues that most anime have like lack of explanations, and I wish the fight scenes had been more interesting to watch, but in general this just something you have to learn to deal with if you're going to watch anime in length. I assume the manga will answer the questions I was left unsatisfied with, but it hasn't progressed far enough along yet. I look forward to catching up to it soon.

So, have you seen Black Butler yet? What did you like? What did you hate?